HEALING! A Comparison of the Healers

Hello, I am a regular (not weekend) beta tester. I am planning to main a healer, so I gave all three a chance. This is a comparison of the healers, based on what I've played and what other testers have said.

There are three healing ACs (advance classes) in the game per faction. They are Operative, Sorceror, and Mercenary on the Empire, and Scoundrel, Sage, and Commando on Republic. If you are unfamiliar with the process, you start the game as a class (i.e. Jedi Counsular). At level 10, you pick an advance class (i.e. Sage), and you put talent points into one of three trees (i.e. Seer) unique to that AC.

Note: For brevity, I will be using the Empire names for classes and abilities. If you want to play Republic, don't worry, it's the same. You'll just need to cross-check the names of the abilities.

Note 2: They are rapidly improving all the classes, so I expect by release, the gap between the healers will be much smaller. Don't worry too much about which healer heals the most. Instead, you should think about which playstyle fits you the best.

Talent Trees: Operatives (and Scoundrels) are the Frankensteins of healers. If you took the healing abilities of a paladin and gave them to a rogue, but left some medium-ranged attacks for good measure, you would have an operative. Two of the talent trees emphasis stealth-based melee dps, while the third talent tree is focused on healing.

Resource: Operatives use ENERGY for their resource, which is functionally identical to the Bounty Hunter's heat and Trooper's ammo. All these classes are restrained by a limited resource pool. Energy regenerates on a GATED (tiered) system. The less energy you have, the less regen you will have (2 to 5 energy/sec). So the best strategy is to maintain high energy levels so that you have high regen levels. When I maintained maximum regen and maintained the stim boost self-buff, I was able to keep a group alive without ever going oom.

Unique Mechanic: Tactical advantage works similarly to holy power. Certain abilities (direct heals, hot ticks, some attacks) give you a point of Tactical Advantage. Unlike holy power, abilities that consume tactical advantage only consume ONE point. So you can save it up and use it one-by-one. Most abilities that consume tactical advantage do not use energy, so it's important to rotate TA-generating and TA-consuming abilities so that you regen stays high.

In my opinion, operatives and scoundrels can be a lot of fun if you like a dynamic healing rotation. You can only spam your bread-and-butter about 6 times before going oom. Therefore, to maintain a good energy efficiency, you're better off acting like a druid most of the time. Like druids, operatives and scoundrels spend most of their "resting" time by maintaining HoTs on their allies. If the fight doesn't become stressful, your stacking HoT (plus the AoE HoT if necessary) can keep everyone alive without difficulty. The HoT gives you points of TA, so you can intersperse your HoT ticks with the instant, free heal.

Once the fight comes stressful (boss), you go into paladin-mode and must wisely triage your direct heals by switching between Kolto Infusion (cheaper, needs TA), Kolto Injection (expensive, makes TA), and Surgical Probe (free, instant, needs TA). If you wisely balance these three while maintaining stim boost and your HoTs, you're invincible. Clearly it's a case of easier said than done, but don't sell the class short because it's attached to the rogue kit. It can be a powerful healer (especially raid healer) in the right hands.

If I could add one thing to operatives and scoundrels, it would be a direct AoE heal that consumes TA. This would balance well with the other AoE heal (a HoT) that does not need TA.

Talent Trees: Mercenaries (and commandos) are, despite the heavy armor, play like a traditional caster. They have two ranged DPS trees, and one healing tree. If you like the idea of playing a mage in heavy armor that can heal, then this is the class for you.

Resource: Mercenaries use heat while Commandos use ammo. While the bars look a little different, and heat is generated in reverse, they function identically to energy. They have a limited cap (100 heat, 12 ammo) and variable regen. See my explanation under operatives for more information on energy, heat/ammo regen, and pacing.

Unique Mechanic: Combat Support is a stackable buff that increases your healing. It is generated by healing others with your free (no heat/ammo) heal, and with your cast heals when talented. Once the stack reaches 30, you can consume your stack of CS to vent heat (restore ammo) and give your abilities a temporary bonus effect (think warlock soul shards) for 10 seconds. Any abilities you use in these 10 seconds can get the bonus.

Mercenaries and Commandos have a really visceral feel to their healing. You can really fortify the tank with a lot of heals: Kolto Shell, a HoT proc from your main heal, a damage reduction buff from your AoE, and easy access to an instant emergency heal just in case. Once you have your tank setup with these perks, you don't have to focus as much on him, affording you more time to use your "busy work" heal (rapid shots) on the others to generate CS.

It's vitally important you generate CS, too, since the CS buffs keep you going. You need it as a stable way to vent heat (regen ammo), it removes the cooldown from your cheaper heal, and it gives you a self-buff to your healing. When times get stressful and you don't have the CS buffs, you're stuck relying on Rapid Scan. That will oom you really quick, so you'll want to have Healing Scan off cooldown.

If you're good at triage and maintaining CS, it can be a relaxing healing style. You're constantly busy, so you'll start zoning out because you have nothing to do (or feel like you should be doing more...). If I could improve Mercenaries and Commandos in one way, it would be giving them a weak HoT that generates CS as it ticks. That would alleviate some of the busy work, which is admittedly the last thing you want to think about in a stressful (boss) situation.

Talent Trees: If you're looking for a very traditional caster experience, sorceror and sage are your best bet. Two trees are dedicated to spellcasting damage, and the third is focused on healing.

Resource: Sorcerors and sages use force as a resource. It feels a lot like mana, but it is limited. You cannot stack force via gear (it's always capped at 500/600 depending on talents). Unlike energy/heat/ammo, force does NOT regen at a variable pace. It regenerates at a constant 8 force/sec. This makes it safer to spam heals and dip lower in resources, since you're not permanently punished with a low regen.

To compensate, your heals are more expensive, so when you do have to spam, you will dip a lot lower than the other healers (ideally) will. You have some tools to help get you back on track. Consumption (i.e. life tap) can restore force at the cost of HP and regen speed. When talented, however, you can avoid the negative costs and keep the benefits by weaving innervate into your rotation.

Therefore, like the operative, sorcerors rely on a decent critical chance for their energy-regen talent to work; unlike operatives (who use cunning), they do not stack crit as well, making it more of a gamble. This is where Force Bending comes into play (see below).

Unique Mechanic: Resurgence is an instant heal + hot (like riptide) that alters the mechanics of your next heal (also like riptide). Resurgence is on a short cooldown (again, like riptide), so you can easily weave it into your rotation. The bonus effect caused by resurgence (called force weaving) only effects the next heal.

As you can see, sorcerors and sages have the most toys to play with. They also have the biggest library of heals, and with the force bending mechanic, they have the most versatility and dynamism in their playstyle. Without a doubt, the most effort has been put into polishing these classes, so it's not much of a surprise. I cannot foresee many situations where they would lack the appropriate heal to respond.

One trap to avoid is, do not think sorcerors are the easiest because they have the most tools. They still require planning and quick thinking like the other healers. If you play it blindly and do not use Force Bending to your advantage, you'll oom super quickly. Your AoE heal costs an outrageous amount without Force Bending, and its necessary to boost crit with innervate.

You sometimes need to think three steps ahead. If you're getting low on force, you first need to use resurgence to get force bending, then you need to use innervate to get the consumption buff, then you need to use consumption. That's several steps to just boost your force points. Try doing all of that during a boss and healing everyone else! As I said, it's not necessarily easy.

Leveling can be tricky since you must rely on "bare" (not innervate-modified) consumption. The unbuffed skill is best left to emergencies, and should not be used as a regular method to get more force. This will force you to learn some triage skills as you level, but just remember that it will get better and easier. (This is true for all the healers, actually.)

Yes nice write up, got me thinking though, I don't plan on being a healer in Star Wars but am playing to be a bounty hunter tank, was going to play on the republic for beta so I don't learn the story hehe, but now might have to try the equivilant class at tanking to see if I like it. Was going to get my fix of a lightsaber before heading to the dark side, but now hmmm.....

Thanks! You'll have a lot of fun playing the bounty hunter. It has a really engaging storyline

Also, my first BH was a powertech (tank), and it was just dandy. Unlike the healers, the tanks are a lot closer in style. They are all good. BH might have a slight advantage, in fact, since it has more ranged attacks to pick up stragglers. If my friend wasn't set on tanking, my first character would probably be a powertech.

Thank you very much for the write up. I am fairly certain I will play a healer at launch and will probably play a scoundrel. I have also considered a Sage but worry their will be a ton of them. I also like the idea of a slightly different take on a healer that the scoundrel seems to have.
Also, liked hearing it was closest to a H Pally as that is my current main in WoW.

Abilities aside, how is healing overall in SWTOR. The UI seems to hinder it. In WoW I used Clique +and Grid, in Rift you had to create the macros but the raid UI is close enough to Grid. SWTOR doesn't have macros, not sure if it has smart heal/targeting, and the UI is odd for healing. What kind of set up are healers using? I don't mind healing but it seems like a chore in SWTOR.

I've never used macros for healing so I can't speak to that, but they do have raid windows that are okay. I had no trouble healing through flashpoints, but again, although I have a very customized UI in Wow, I don't use heal macros.

I'm hoping for a UI upgrade shortly after release that will address some of the customization issues that we currently have, and allow for more flexible playstyles.

I watched a video of an end game Operation and the healers seemed to be doing fine with the current setup.

Abilities aside, how is healing overall in SWTOR. The UI seems to hinder it. In WoW I used Clique +and Grid, in Rift you had to create the macros but the raid UI is close enough to Grid. SWTOR doesn't have macros, not sure if it has smart heal/targeting, and the UI is odd for healing. What kind of set up are healers using? I don't mind healing but it seems like a chore in SWTOR.

The UI needs a little work for healers. I don't use the default party frames since they are placed in the bottom left corner. It's really hard to see what's going on when you're looking down there. Instead, I use the raid frames all the time. The raid frames have a little customization (you can change height, width, and the group order), but they are lacking in other departments (can't tell it to build "up" instead of down, can't hide energy/force/etc, can't highlight when curable debuff is present).

As far as I can tell, you can't mouseover heal, either. There isn't anything like clique. None of the AoE heals have smart targeting. The raid UI currently doesn't show incoming heals from other healers, either. But, that said, the raid UI is improved every patch. I bet by release it will have all the bare essentials.

The only unique benefit I've seen is, you can see party member's health over their actual avatar in the game. In smaller parties, you can heal without ever looking at your party/raid frames, and just watch the actual players. It's not always practical, but it's a nice to take a break from watching bars all the time.

So it feels a little clunky still, but it's definitely doable. If you use the raid frames and change their shape a little, you can at least get something like grid going. I did it right away, since I like to see the health bars closer to the center of the screen.

Originally Posted by Dynati

detectivekr, would you mind including some build ideas for healing roles in each class? That would be about the only improvement that I could see on your OP.

Sure! It might be worthwhile to wait until the game is closer to release, though. The talents are changing a lot in every build.

Raid sizes are smaller and healing doesn't seem to be that intensive yet, so I'm pretty sure F1-8/click targeting will get us by until they implement mouseovers. MMOs in general need to start implementing a baseline way to assign mouseovers without having to write macros/install add-ons.